Woody Allen once said, “I took a speed-reading course where you run your finger down the middle of the page and was able to read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” I don’t speed-read my book picks—and I was blessed with a heavy client load last year, so I averaged an eNews about twice a month, a bit down from my 34 reviews in 2011—but who’s counting?

This first issue of 2013 features my annual recap of the books I reviewed in 2012 (Issues No. 240 to 264). To read all the 2012 book reviews from Your Weekly Staffing Meeting, visit the "archives" here on my Buckets Blog. To download a PDF of the chronological list of book reviews from 2006 through today (all 265 issues), visit the Book Bucket at my Management Buckets website. In 2012, I published 25 issues with reviews of 22 books, plus two Harvard Business Review articles, one creative thinking card deck, and one board member recruitment DVD/toolbox.

It's a tough assignment to narrow it down to 10 that all have popular appeal—since all of us are at different levels of competency across the 20 management buckets. Other than my top pick, the other nine are listed here in chronological order.

Lencioni articulates the “values” discussion with wit and wisdom. He’s the only management guru who says there are four categories of values (Core Values, Aspirational Values, Permission-to-Play Values, and Accidental Values) and that you’re wasting everyone’s time by including some of these in your strategy documents.

I also appreciated this insight: “Bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication.” He adds, “If someone were to offer me one single piece of evidence to evaluate the health of an organization, I would not ask to see its financial statements, review its product line, or even talk to its employees or customers: I would want to observe the leadership team during a meeting.”

If you’ve conquered procrastination, you will still find the 21 strategies valuable—especially as you coach others. “One strategy might be effective in one situation and another might apply to another task. All together, these 21 ideas represent a smorgasbord of personal effectiveness techniques that you can use at any time, in any order or sequence that makes sense to you at the moment.” The one-liners are memorable—and poster-worthy: --“Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.” --“It only takes about 10 to 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you up to two hours (100 to 120 minutes) in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.” “Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.” --“Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control of the sequence of events.”

The perfect book to give to donors, this is a page-turner. I was captivated by the story—built on the memorable simplicity of a dime. (I predict you’ll repeat this stunning story dozens of times.) --I was convicted by the insights. “The journey from owner to steward is the transformational journey from bondage to freedom, anxiety to peace, grasping to letting go.” --I was shocked by the honesty—especially the transparent confessions that maybe, just maybe, our evangelical mantra of sacrificial giving (“give until it hurts”) is, in fact, not biblical. Yikes. --I was inspired by the biblical principles. “We should be outrageously generous givers because we were created in the image of an outrageously giving God.” And “No matter how much we think we have or don’t have, we have enough.”

This book, about recent U.S. presidents, is a leadership case study on multiple levels. CEOs in transition (retirement, termination or promotion) will especially appreciate this revealing inside look at the new guy/old guy relationships in the Oval Office. The book will trigger all your emotions (as it did for each president): mad, glad and sad.

Ruth Haley Barton has the audacity to write, “Just because something is strategic does not necessarily mean it is God’s will for us right now.” She says that our staff meetings and board meetings must move from decision-making to discernment. “Spiritual discernment is the ability to distinguish between good (that which is of God and draws us closer to God) and evil (that which is not of God and draws us away from God).”

The author researched hundreds of online videos of the most popular 18-minute talks presented at the highly acclaimed TED Conferences. In just 107 big-print, fast-reading pages, he boils it all down. But it’s not a speaking-tips-for-dummies blah/blah/blah book; it’s much, much better—and rich in detail where it matters.

A Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

That’s also relevant counsel for your board member recruitment process. The best time to discern board member criteria and qualifications is before you invite inappropriate people onto your board. But moving from “slot-filling” to a thoughtful discernment process is not easy. The new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series launched in 2012 and the first title in the series is “Recruiting Board Members: Leveraging the 4 Phases of Board Recruitment—Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation and Engagement.” (Disclosure: I was privileged to be involved in this project.)

This “View-Inspire-Engage” toolbox includes a 13-minute DVD, 12 Board Member Read-and-Engage Viewing Guides, and a Facilitator Guide with just-in-time help to engage your board on this fork-in-the-road core competency.

The problem says Michalko, “If you always think the way you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

The solution: “Everything new is really an addition to or modification of something that already existed. To create a new idea, product, service, process, breakthrough, or whatever else you need, just take a subject and change it into something.” So this creativity guru recommends you “S.C.A.M.P.E.R” and leverage the nine principal ways of changing a subject:Substitute something.Combine it with something else.Adapt something to it.Modify or Magnify it.Put it to some other use.Eliminate something.Reverse or Rearrange it.

The Thinkpak brainstorming card deck has 56 cards including two instructional cards, four or five cards for each of the nine key processes, plus seven cards with creative ways to evaluate ideas. It’s a brilliant instant brainstorming system. But caution! It could be dangerous to your boring, status quo!

Forget the 16 grids and confusing letter combinations of Myers-Briggs (ENTJ, INTJ, etc.). Skip the four animals system (“I can’t remember—am I a collie, a muskrat or a hippo?”) Don’t waste time on the personality color systems, unless everyone in your circle is a color zealot (and they’re not).

If you want to effectively relate to people, literally in an instant, then order this new, easy-to-remember slant: • Analyticals are Thinkers • Amiables are Touchers • Drivers are Tellers • Expressives are Talkers

P.S. Master List of Book Reviews:Click here to download my chronological list of 265 issues/book reviews from Your Weekly Staff Meeting from 2006 through today.And finally, these reminders for 2013:C.S. Lewis said, "It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

And I would add: 1) Delegate your reading. Assign books to other team members and ask for mini-reports at staff meetings.2) Read relevant chapters only. Don't feel guilty for not finishing a book. 3) Hold high the value of sharpening the saw and model it yourself and reward others who read. 4) Budget for books. Invest in your people by investing in books. 5) Discover whether your people are readers or listeners. Audio books might be helpful to some.